


And in the dark I can hear your heartbeat

by impossibletruths



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, F/M, Orpheus and Eurydice Myth, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 23:30:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8820676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossibletruths/pseuds/impossibletruths
Summary: After he falls they bring him to Whitestone, to Pike, and they shatter his chains and call him home. But some darkness cannot be so easily bested, and sometimes a deal must be struck before a soul can be saved.Or, an Orpheus and Eurydice AU.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [justalotoffeelings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justalotoffeelings/gifts).



> For Alana, who is utterly incredible and whose CR bang art slam dunked me into this AU. Thanks darling.
> 
> Title from "Cosmic Love" by Florence + the Machine.

“Right,” decides Pike, swiping the back of her hand across her face. “I’m going after him.”

“What?” demands Vax as Keyleth blurts out, “How?”

“But it worked,” Vex protests over both of them, cheeks wet. “You said Keyleth shattered the barrier, you said the ritual worked, you said––“

“He isn’t listening,” Pike replies, pulling her hair back with single-minded focus. She ignores the tears down her face. She can be heartbroken and afraid afterwards, when he is safe; none of them have the time for it now. “Or, he can’t hear. I don’t know. But I’m not leaving him.”

“After him _where_ ,” demands Scanlan, a ringing note of panic humming through his words, and Pike takes a deep breath, squaring his shoulders.

“I’ve spent a lot of time astral projecting,” she says in lieu of an answer. “I’ll be alright.”

“What if you aren’t,” Keyleth asks in small voice. One of her hands is fisted in the cloth of Percy’s coat; she’s been holding him since the ritual began. “What if you don’t–– if it doesn’t–– Pike, we can’t lose you too.” Tears and ash and blood streak her too-pale face. Pike lays a gentle hand upon her leg.

“You called him,” she tells the woman, and turns her gaze to look upon the rest of them. “We all did. Just… hold on to that, okay? Keep calling. I’ll bring him back. I promise.”

Keyleth meets her eyes, and Pike nods slowly, solemn, and Keyleth nods back through her tears. Pike turns away.

“Grog,” she says gently. “Can you help me up please?”

“Wha? Oh, yeah.” He lifts her carefully so she can sit tailor style at Percy’s head. She brushes his limp hair out of his too-pale, too-still face. A hairline fracture runs through one lens of his glasses; Pike pulls them off. Vex takes them with a shaking hand.

He could almost be sleeping. Almost. Pike takes a breath.

“Hold on, Percy,” she murmurs. “I’m coming.”

She closes her eyes and breaths out, cradling Percy’s head in her hands. She hears the rustle and shift of her family, the sniffling and stifled sobs. She hears their heartbreak and their fear, and their hope, and she holds onto it as she sinks into herself, into the warm glowing center of her being, into the well of love and faith and fire that is her connection to Sarenrae, and she murmurs, _please_ into the darkness of her closed eyelids, and lets go.

For a moment she is weightless, and then the vertigo kicks in and she twists and turns like a leaf, and there is nothing beneath her, there is nothing around her, there is nothing but the dark and she is tumbling, she is falling, she is––

Still.

Her eyes open slowly.

It's dark here, a hungry, stifling darkness that creeps into her, an inky smoke that curls around her, fills her lungs when she breathes and lingers there. It wraps around her, a cocoon, many-fingered hands around her neck and bindings around her limbs and she does not know if she is standing or kneeling or lying down; there is no up or down, only the blackness, only the reaching dark, and it wants her, it _wants_ her; she cannot see, she is drowning, she needs light, just a little bit of light, just a little bit of––

Her holy symbol glows at her chest and the dark snaps back. Pike sucks in a breath, clutching the medallion tight enough to leave an imprint, wings spread across her palm. The light spills through her fingers, comes from her fingers, spread up her arms and through her chest and in an instant she glows, quietly and softly among the dark, and the shadows––how can there be shadows in something that is already a void, she almost-wonders––shift back, watching and wary.

“I am not alone,” she says, and she feels a tug beneath her ribcage, and there is a golden spool there, waiting to be unraveled. “I am not unprotected,” she says, and she is not, she is wearing her armor, glowing softly. “I am not lost,” she says, and she discovers she is standing, standing on a narrow path of purple-grey smoke, and it winds away from her, down or up or forwards into the abyss.

“I won’t leave without him,” she tells the dark, and the dark shifts and coils and watches.

Pike takes a deep breath, and squares her shoulders, and takes a step along the curling smoke path, and then another, and another, and golden thread spools behind her as she marches into the dark.

She walks a long, long time. Her armor makes no noise as she goes. Nothing makes noise here; the dark swallows it far too quickly. Pike keeps her eyes ahead and walks.

The smoke curls and twists beneath her as she goes. It doubles back on itself, rising and falling, turning circles and figure eights and looping above and around, as if it might dissuade her from reaching the end of her path. A golden thread stretches behind her, unspooling from the point just beneath her ribcage, a line of gold among the blackness, weaving and darting in a complicated, formless dance, a marker of where she has gone. Her tether, tying her back to the land of the living, and at the end of it she feels them, her anchors, her family. She feels Keyleth’s fire and Vex’s hope and Vax’s desperation; she feels Scanlan’s worry and Grog’s impatience. She feels their faith, calling her home.

She cannot return home, not yet. Not without him.

She grips her holy symbol tight and pushes deeper into the dark.

The shadows change slowly around her, an infinitesimal growth, and she does not notice the shifting until it has risen around her. The smoke path bleeds and spreads like paint in water, pools and runs, and what was a winding trail turns jagged underfoot. The shades of trees reach up around her, dead and petrified things, and she slips between the sharp claws of their branches, one foot in front of the other. The shadows watch her pass, reaching and hungry, and shy away from her light. Pike continues undeterred.

She will not return without him. She cannot.

The shadow trees––grey-purple things among the velvet dark, towering and hungry and watchful, bending and shifting as she passes beneath them––open up into a clearing that is a chasm, the earth blown apart. The trees close behind her, a silent audience, a pressure at her back, and Pike straightens her spine against them.

She stands at the edge of the chasm, unyielding, and a figure looms before her.

“Orthax,” she says.

Orthax watches her, edges blurring and shifting and bleeding into the shadows around it, leaving the ground scorched and withered in its wake, and she did not know shadows could fade or die but this dark-and-dead world strains away from the demon.

Pike knows this monster. She remembers unhooking its claws from Percy’s mind once before, remembers burning it in the depth of the mountain beneath Whitestone. Her holy symbol flares, and her glow strengthens, and perhaps it is her imagination but it seems the world shivers around her and pulls back, until they are each alone in this landscape of shade and smoke, islands among the watching trees and jagged earth, one golden light and the other a hungry void.

Orthax chuckles.

“Little mortal,” it says in a voice that is grinding stone and cracking bone. “Holy woman. Why have you come?”

“I’m here for Percy,” she says, and her words are clear-flowing water and ringing armor. “I won’t leave without him.”

“You would defy me?” the demon asks, the brass sound of war horns and the long, slow sigh of drowning. “For one man, you would defy me, and death itself?”

“Yes,” says Pike. The demons surges forwards, fills the bowl of the crater like ink and oil.

“Why?” it hisses, the sound of cooling iron.

“I love him,” Pike says, and she speaks with the light of the sun.

Orthax recoils.

“And so does his family,” she continues, words scythe-sharp as they cut through the shadows. “And our friends. We destroyed you before and we will do it again and again and again, because he is loved and needed and you _will not have him_.”  

Her voice rings, the echo of something bigger and brighter and bolder than herself beneath her words, and the creature shifts and slides through the crater, and for a moment it comes apart, unraveling, and Pike sees within the writhing mass, glimpses pale hair and pale skin and pale scars, and her heart catches in her throat. She reaches towards him but the shadows lash out, and she grips her holy symbol as it flares. Orthax hisses and swallows him again, Percy’s form disappearing within the dark.

“I have won his soul,” snaps the demon in its oil-slick voice. “This deal cannot be unmade.”

“He’s not done yet,” Pike persists, steadfast, her fear tucked away deep inside where where the monster will not find it. “Give him back.”

“What will you give me in return?” demands Orthax, greedy and desperate, surging forward again to stand over her, and she must crane her head up to see it, and she has never felt like such a small thing before. “Hmm? What is worth this one’s life? It is a broken, battered thing. A holy woman like yourself could do so much better. I could give you so much more. Leave this one to me.”

“No.” She holds her holy symbol tight, and lifts her chin, and she feels the imprint of wings burst from her back to spread wide over her shoulders, and she may be a small thing but she burns bright and beautiful, and the shades of crooked trees dissipate under the brilliance of her light. The shadow forest crumbles like ash, and she stands upon a narrow, twisting path of purple-grey smoke, the looming void empty save for the shifting form of the demon before her.

She will not be cowed. She will not fail. She stands with her goddess at her side, and her friends at her back, and her love in her heart, and this creature of shadow and death will not best her.

Orthax pulls back.

“Take him, then,” the monster hisses, tendrils of oily shadow pulling away from the man trapped within him. “Take him, and guide him home. But keep your eyes ahead little mortal, for if you look back at him, he will be mine, and no words nor goddess will take him from me. Do we have a deal?”

The monster has neither eyes nor face in this place, but Pike look up at it anyways, and the wings at her back flare. Orthax recoils, hissing.

“Yes,” she says, a certainty she does not feel lacing her voice. Vex is the negotiator; Vex should be making this deal. But Vex is not here, so Pike will do what she must.

She offers her hand, a beacon among the dark, and Orthax takes it, long, clawed hand holding her tight. The shadows burn where they touch her flesh, grey smoke rising where light meets dark, divine and demonic, and Orthax hisses as it lets go. Pike feels something settle behind her heart, heavy and cold, and knows their deal is struck.

“Now go, little mortal,” says the demon with a laugh like shattered glass as he fades back into the endless void, and Percy struggles forth from its grasp. “Have faith, holy woman. Turn and walk away. He will follow.”

Pike turns, and sets her feet upon the narrow path of curling purple smoke, and walks.

She walks for a long, long time. Her feet make no sound as she goes, and she does not hear Percy behind her––does not hear his tap of his feet, nor the huff of his breath, nor the swish of his coat. The darkness consumes everything except the smoke path beneath her feet and the faded golden tether that spools from a point just beneath her ribcage, winding as she retraces her steps, nearly grey. Panic washes through her, setting her heart hammering. She has tarried too long in this land of death; her connection will not hold much longer. She quickens her pace. She has not come this far through shadow and death to fail now.

Behind her she hears nothing, and she yearns to turn around, to check, just a glance to make sure, but she cannot. She will not.

She stares resolutely into the darkness and presses onwards, blind and deaf and holding fast to her faith, for there is nothing else to hold within the endless emptiness.

The sound, when she hears it, comes from far away, distorted and echoing as if she is deep underwater, and for a moment she does not recognize it. Then the world shifts, almost imperceptibly, and though cannot make out neither words nor melody she would know that bright, tripping voice anywhere.

Scanlan. They are so close. They are almost there.

Yet even as she strains towards the waking world her light flickers, a dancing candle in the dark, and each step is heavier than the last, feet dragging. Her armor weighs her down, and the smoke blurs and shifts underfoot, and the darkness presses in among her weakness. The tether is a grey and withered thing, a mere filament, and even as she reaches out she knows she is not fast enough, not strong enough. She stumbles, the path underfoot fading away like ash in the wind, and she does not know which way is up or down, does not know if she is standing or sitting or fallen. The shadows close in as her light flickers and fades, and she desperately wants to turn around to reach for Percy, to apologize, but she cannot, she cannot, even as the dark reaches for her she must not look back, must not damn him back to that hell.

She will make sure he keeps his freedom. She can do that much, at least.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs as the shadows surge, swallowing her, whispering their laughter at the idea that she could _succeed_ , that she could enter their domain and bring back his soul. They drown out Scanlan’s distant signing, and she mourns the loss of music, of brightness, of the vibrant world. “I’m so sorry, Percy.”

“It’s alright, Pike,” she thinks she hears him say as the roaring rush of the dark rises around her, and smiles at her own foolish hope. “I can take it from here.”

Something shifts, and she sees stars against the back of her closed eyelids, and everything––

Stops.

* * *

Pike wakes with a gasp.

Her eyes snap open, air filling her lungs, and for a moment the light streaming through the bare bones of the temple blind her, and she blinks sunbursts out of her eyes. In her hands, Percy’s head jerks up and he takes a sucking breath that turns into a hacking, wet cough, before he leans over the edge of the table and is sick all over the dusty stone of the temple floor, and Pike feels like following his example.

“What––“ he says, shivering, and Pike puts a hand on his back to steady him. He is still cool, even through his coat, but his chest rises and falls, and she can feel the _lub-dub_ beat of his heart, and he is here, alive, she did it, they did it, and the blurriness to her vision is not blindness; it is tears.

“Are you alright?” she asks, struggling for breath, and he turns to stare at her, eyes wide.

“You came,” he says. “You–– Orthax, it––“ He stares at her with wide, bright eyes, and his hands are shaking, knuckles white where he grips the table, and Pike laughs, wild and euphoric.

“It worked,” she says. “Oh, thank Sarenrae, it worked.” She has never felt such overwhelming relief; it leaves her weak and shaking, and she steadies herself against Percy. “That was so stressful!”

“I–– How?”

“I don’t know,” she says, because she thinks it may have been a miracle. “But we did it. We did it.”

Percy takes a deep, shuddering breath and glances at the damp faces and wide-wild smiles of their family around them.

“Thank you,” he says. Pike swallows, her hand still on his back. “For everything, I–– Thank you.”

“Don’t do it again,” Vax orders, grinning behind his tears, and Keyleth laughs a watery laugh, and Percy looks to Pike, awe and gratitude painted across his face, and it steals her breath away.

“You’re welcome,” she says, quiet and gentle around the lump in her throat. “It wasn’t time for you to go.”

“No,” he replies, just as quiet, words for her ears only as their family cries and smiles around them. “I suppose it wasn’t.”

“And you won’t do it again,” she says, more loudly.

“I shall certainly try not to,” he agrees as the doors to the temple burst open and Cassandra strides through, dress billowing. Grog helps Pike down from the table, and keeps her steady as her legs threaten to buckle under her, but she stays standing, watching the siblings trade barbs, anxiety and relief humming beneath their words.

“Thank you,” Cassandra says to her, heartfelt, and Pike ducks her head for a moment, before raising her eyes to stare at Percy, shaken and tired but whole. He meets her gaze, a wry, tired smile slipping across his face, gone almost as soon as she sees it, and she offers her own in return.

Eyes forward, one foot in front of the other. They’ll make it through this nightmare, even if they have to fight all the shadows of the world to get there.

Individually, they haven’t much of a chance. Together, they just might make it.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr at [teammompike](http://teammompike.tumblr.com)


End file.
